Pentagon: Women can advance to front lines

Combat infantry, armor, special ops open up to all by 2016

10:27 PM,
Jun. 18, 2013

Written by

Tom Vanden Brook
| USA Today

Women will join front-line combat roles by 2016, the Pentagon announced Tuesday.

The services laid out their schedules Tuesday for achieving full integration over the next three years. Those timelines followed the decision in January by then-Defense Secretary Leon Panetta to open 237,000 military jobs off-limits to women. Those include infantry, armor and special operations.

There are about 1.4 million members of the active-duty military, about 14 percent of them women. ...